Directly following the New Zealand Pinot Noir Celebration 2010 in February this year, I attended the Nelson Aromatics Symposium, staying with the Finns at Neudorf Vineyard. I was met at the airport by Richard Flatman, who had just left Two Paddocks in Central Otago to join the Neudorf team. Flatman is one of the most passionate organic and biodynamic viticulture
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The Benchmark of Marlborough and representative New Zealand Vineyard Savouring my glass of 2007 Seresin Sauvignon Blanc, actually I am guzzling and already on to my third glass, so good is this wine; concentrated, complex, invigorating and comparable to any top Sancerre or Pouilly Fume. It is the quintessential New Zealand wine, an exemplar and nexus to the geography and
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Originally intended to be part of my larger project "Australia Benchmark Chardonnay Producers" I am sure readers will not mind if I include chardonnay’s soul mate, pinot noir in this coverage of new releases from Sugarloaf Ridge. The 2007 Sugarloaf Ridge Chardonnay is indeed a blinder, nothing short of exemplary and in my view, the benchmark for Tasmania. In the
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Indelible purity of fruit, fresh acidity and minerally redolent, texturally seamless with exhilarating tension – 2007 is clearly a harmonious vintage augmenting the stellar evolution of Sugarloaf Ridge. To the frustration of many a wine enthusiast, wine Intel travels a lot easier than the bottles and invariably one finds themselves drooling over the prose of a sublime wine of miniscule
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A conversation centred on the rapidly evolving Asia wine market with wine writing colleagues the other day brought to light the growing divergence in preference for wine styles or grape varieties between countries and metropolis’s around the region. All of us are resigned to the fact red bordeaux or anything with “Chateau” on the label presently rules in mainland China
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Reuters Life! - It's a big call, nailing the single wine of 2009 that was most impressionable amongst so many good bottles and an ever-increasing myriad of quality, relatively more approachable wines produced around the globe. However, Two Paddocks Pinot Noir 2006 from Central Otago, New Zealand, is the wine that stimulated my sensory core, viscera and thoughts most in
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From a lost play by Eubulos, (c.405 BC - c.335 BC)
‘For sensible men I prepare only three kraters (large vase used to mix wine): one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home.

The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.’

The Wandering Palate - Curtis Marsh
With nearly 30 years experience in the hospitality, wine and media industries, Curtis Marsh is one of the most erudite, passionate and truly independent wine writer, commentator and presenter in Asia.

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new.”

As uttered by the vitriolic restaurant critic Anton Ego, in the film “Ratatouille”, after his epiphany.